John Almon : more than a bookseller -- Reading the Letter : a (short) chapter of its own -- Inventing postcolonialism : Burke's and Barry's Paradise lost and regained -- The meaning of names : Thompson's Marvell and the Whigs -- The two snuffboxes : recovering the Whig in Reynolds -- Thomas Erskine : the great defender -- Two steps forward, one step backwards : William Wordsworth's revisionism